24 comments:

Wow, back to firing squad, huh? There’s a good way to mess up a bunch of soldiers (or find the really messed up soldiers, I suppose).

FlyingChainSaw

5:01 pm • Wednesday • October 12, 2011

What’s wrong with stoning?

Benedick

5:31 pm • Wednesday • October 12, 2011

Let me guess: he’s a tea bagger and christianist. I’m with FCS: stoning is the way to go. And also crushing under tank treads. Not but s’rsly, sounds like a mormon. They go for the blood atonement deal. As Gore Vidal once memorably remarked on Teddy Roosevelt, “Never trust a sissy with a gun.”

You know what is coming? Lion 2. Aka 10.7.2. And you know what comes with Lion 2?

iCloud.

That’s right. All your Apple fantasies will now come together in one place. (Maybe not all your fantasies… )

And how long before we hear that Steve is up there in iCloud looking down on us? Oh. You just did.

@IanJ: The legend of the blank: it was always said that one member of the squad was firing a blank. So no one knew if their rifle made the killing shot. Much was made of this regarding the woman known as Mata Hari. I suspect it’s Horlicks. Almost everything is.

@Benedick: The soldier who can’t tell the difference between a blank and a real round is sufficiently disconnected from reality as to be a danger to himself and others. But that’s me being all practical and stuff.

IanJ

6:19 pm • Wednesday • October 12, 2011

@redmanlaw: Add in a coliseum and a dude wearing a laurel leaf coronet, and I’m sold.

Shooting can be carried out by a single executioner who fires from a short range at the back of the head or neck, as is the case in China and the USSR (before abolition). The intention of shooting at short range is to destroy the vital centres of the medulla (lower brain stem), as happens when a captive bolt is used for slaughtering cattle. This method typically results in instant unconsciousness due to concussion caused by the fracturing of the skull and destruction of the brain tissue.

The traditional firing squad is made up of three to six shooters per prisoner who stand or kneel opposite the condemned who is usually tied to a stake or a chair. Normally the shooters aim at the chest, since this is easier to hit than the head. A firing squad aiming at the head produces the same type of wounds as those produced by a single bullet, but bullets fired at the chest rupture the heart, large blood vessels and lungs so that the condemned person dies of haemorrhage and shock. It is not unusual for the officer in charge of the firing squad to have to give the prisoner a “coup de grace” – a pistol shot to the head to finish them off if the initial volley has failed to kill them.

According to Dr. Le Garde, in his book “Gunshot Injuries,” . . . “any person being executed by firing squad that has been shot in the heart would experience intense and overwhelming pain before being rendered unconscious from cerebral hypoxia.”

@redmanlaw: I thought everyone got blanks except for one shooter, and no one knew who had the live round.

matador1015

11:10 pm • Wednesday • October 12, 2011

Anyone who thinks electrocution is humane has obviously never seen this movie.

Benedick

9:36 am • Thursday • October 13, 2011

As ever, RML brings actual knowledge to bear.

@matador1015: I don’t think he means it to be humane. I think he means it to be painful and dramatic.

Of course, what this makes me wonder is if we must reassure ourselves by finding ‘humane’ methods of execution should we be executing people at all?

redmanlaw

3:29 pm • Thursday • October 13, 2011

@JNOV: If you look at the videos of Waffen SS members executed for war crimes after WWII, you’ll see that there are multiple hits on the dirt berm behind the condemned, so more that one guy was using live ammo.

/ no link provided

jwmcsame

5:08 pm • Thursday • October 13, 2011

@redmanlaw: Were some of the firing squad missing on purpose to prolong the agony? Julius Streicher, noted nazi propagandist who fox noise proclaimed was 50 years ahead of his time, told the hangman that “the Bolsheviks will hang you one day” as he went down kicking.